Text and Subtext

Haiku of Now challenge results were released on Friday. Haiku challenges are easy winners’ page reads, but good grief, the judges had to slog through over 1300, minus the ones that were disqualified for not adhering. A couple of mine probably fell into that pile—if you read beyond the blurb, it was a very specific challenge—no past, no reflection, no past tense, no interpretation—just a lived-in moment. Some of mine reflected or interpreted, may have even had a past tense verb somewhere.

The five winners packed so much into those seventeen syllables, a couple of them carrying so much weight I’m surprised the system didn’t collapse. All of the winning entries had subtext, and subtext matters.

Anything that’s all surface is never going to be recognized, regardless of how pretty it is or how well it adheres to a specific form. Content is the driving force of literature—it’s what readers show up for. Texts that have subtext engage readers on multiple levels, and these works are communicating more than the message found in a surface read.

When I see frustration expressed about winning pieces, I question the reader, not the challenge judges. Sophisticated texts require sophisticated readers, and while there’s meaning to comprehend on the surface, it’s usually just a threshold into the work’s deeper meaning. It’s fairly safe to assume that all winning entries have at least one subtext. I try to give all challenge winners a close read, but some topics are not to my taste, which is okay—my preferences are completely irrelevant to the quality of the work, and preferences and standards are not the same thing.

The first step to becoming a better writer is becoming a better reader. One part of becoming a better reader is learning to appreciate works that you don’t necessarily like. Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella comes to mind. I loathed it, but that didn’t spare me a close read—it was guaranteed to be on the exam, which was guaranteed not to inquire about my aesthetics or preferences. I can’t think of a single time one of my professors asked the class what we thought of a work and meant whether or not we liked it: the question was always “what do you think about . . .?” never “how do you feel about . . . ?” Astrophil and Stella is a brilliant sonnet sequence, and I understand why it is a great poem. I hope I never have to read it again.